Marketing is a mess, so stop overcomplicating everything and do some simple thinking based on your brand’s obvious differentiating characteristics.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

Sub-titled The Antidote for Today’s Marketing Mess, this is a pointed polemic about the state that marketing has got itself into. He gives a thorough pasting to marketing, advertising, research, Wall Street, the internet, and several named client companies.

Instead of concentrating on segmentation, customer retention or search engine optimisation, marketers should be looking for that simple, obvious differentiating idea.

Particular culprits are people and organisations that deliberately put complication in the way of the obvious – and shoot themselves in the foot.

Many people fear the activity of thinking so they follow suggestions made by others to avoid it.

ELEMENTS OF THE BOOK I PARTICULARLY LIKE

We seem to have no time to think any more. Many meetings are little more than gadget envy sessions.

Mission statements are denounced as bunk. A survey of 300 revealed that the words used in them are all the same: service (230), customers (211), quality (194), value, employees, growth, environment, profit, leader, best.

Sales, technology and performance leadership are all valid concepts. Thought leadership is not – it doesn’t mean anything.

If you want to solve a problem, try: substitute, combine, adapt, magnify, minimise, eliminate, and a range of other angular thinking techniques

The biggest blunders these days are: Me-too product or idea, unclear what you are selling, untruthful claims, arrogance brought on by success